The Sims 4: StrangerVille Review

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The Sims 4 just released a new game pack, which is more of a mini-story mode that takes place solely in StrangerVille. This is a desert town that holds a dark secret where it’s citizens are acting bizarre. Especially in regards to a secret lab located in a crater. Similar to Strange Town of The Sims 2. To help you along with the story they have an aspiration that walks you through each of the steps you need to do so you can solve the story. I used to love The Sims 3: World Adventures and trying to figure out the mysteries of the temples.

You can plant bugs on a variety of characters including: scientists, military personnel, and conspiracy theorists to try to figure out what’s happening in StrangerVille. If Seasons is installed on your computer, there will also be weird weather and secret messages from Santa if you plant a bug on him. Use these secret recordings to unlock clues that can be used to gain a key card for the secret lab. Or rank up in the new military career to requisition one. This is a career I’ve wanted to see in the game for a while so I’m glad to see it added. You can use this career outside of the desert town as well without any of the story elements. So you don’t have to worry about the events of Strangerville effecting the rest of your towns in The Sims 4.

I’m not going to spoil the story (though I do have a spoiler image later on if you want to expand it to see) in this review but I really enjoyed it. However, I think this would’ve been better to release as a separate game for the story elements. Like don’t take away the new careers, buy/build items, or CAS (including new trait of paranoid) but the story element is so self-contained it might not be the best for repeat-ability. I have completed the full story, but I could not see myself it doing over and over again. Also considering it only takes maybe two hours to complete. While it was entertaining and something different, there isn’t anything that’s going to be wildly different playing it another time.

Sims have done spin-off games in in the past plus if they made it separate we could actually get a bigger world as they’ve been making them smaller for the save files for the common user. I miss the bigger worlds that had more than a handful of lots as the last two expansions have given us. This new one only have twelve lots if you include two venues and the secret lab. So not a lot of space for building.

That’s not the only downside of the pack. The world looks like an updated, re-skin version of Oasis Springs and one of the houses that come with the pack is an identical version of an existing one in Willow Creek. It’s a really minor thing but still it’s something I noticed.

Ok enough of the negatives, let’s get back to some positives. I genuinely enjoyed the social interactions between Sims. Specifically when playing a Sim with the new Paranoid trait, I found myself in various funny situations with other Sims. You can pick fights with them by accusing Sims of spying on you, ’cause it’s not like you’re planting bugs on them or anything.

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SPOILER WARNING: Final Form of the Plant... i.e. The Mother! Don't Expand if you don't want the surprise ruined

So there are some good positives and certain elements I’ll probably use a bunch from this game pack, but the story mode I’ll probably just enjoy the one time before opting out on all the weirdness of StrangerVille. Sort of like Vampires, while I love the supernatural stuff I don’t use it often enough and vampires appearing in the middle of the night at your house gets annoying. What do you think of StrangerVille?

Love ya,

Mae Polzine

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